Monthly Archives: October 2010

Jokes:

Proper Grammar
The teacher wrote on the blackboard, “I ain’t had no fun all summer.” “Now Paul,” she said. “What shall I do to correct this?” “Get a boyfriend.” Paul replied.

Dressing Rooms
A lady walked into a boutique and asked the sales lady, “May I try on that cute dress in the window?” The sales lady replied; “Sure, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a dressing room?”

Birthday Presents
The parents of a difficult boy were discussing what to give him for a birthday present. The mother said, “Let’s buy him a bicycle.” “Well,” said the father, “maybe but do you think it will improve his behavior?” “Probably not,” said the mother, “but it will spread it over a wider area.”

On Our Mind:

NMSA 2010 Conference (If you’re going, contact us. We have a great link for you).
Keep in mind that new flight rules take effect on Nov. 1st.

Middle School Science Minute

From our Listeners:

As far as the testing discussion goes, I am blown away by states that test the previous year’s material at the beginning of the following year. That just doesn’t make sense to me (not that I agree with all of NC’s testing program either). Here in NC, we administer EOG (End-of-Grade) tests about 3 weeks before school is out for the summer. Admin get the scores back about 5 hours after the last test is finished, and teachers usually get scores the following day. Scores are released to students before going home for the summer. The past couple of years, we have had a retest program for students who did not score at proficient levels.

Granted, there are issues with this system as well. Testing that far in advance of the end of school leads to a “Why are we still here?” attitude from some of the kids after the test. I think that makes much more sense than not being able to start the year covering relevant grade-level material.
Todd WilliamsonNote: We’re hoping there will be a ton of folks at his presentation on Friday at 7:30 am in Baltimore this coming week. If you’re going to NMSA and willing, please consider his presentation in Room: 339 (Baltimore Convention Center)
Audience: Community Leaders, Media Specialists/Librarians, Pre-service teachers, Teachers, Technical Coordinators
Presentation Level: Intermediate
Presentation Description: Students today live in a highly networked world—from email to text messaging to online gaming and social networking. Teachers, meanwhile, often express concerns about staying one step ahead of technology savvy students. Learn about the rationale for using social media in the classroom along with strategies for navigating the new media landscape with your students. Also featured will be the SMARTR portal, a STEM portal of youth- focused Math and Science virtual learning experiences developed for and by students!

This Part for Infamous40000 . . . :

Hero Machine: Design your own superhero: http://tinyurl.com/olzc3a
Uber-Mongo-Important assignment for operative Infamous40000: Design a superhero and share the experience with us. Call us at (262) 724-6653 and send us a copy of your superhero!

Larry Ferlazzo links to an article from the Christian Science Monitor on “slow reading” . The gist of the article is that students are learning to read in a different way than before. They are skimming instead of reading for understanding. This is part of a larger movement which says that people who read on a screen tend to skim more than read longer works. This reading style than changes the way that our brains are wired.

This made me think of some of the changes that we have made at our school. Our sixth grade students are all conferencing with their teachers. This conferencing has made it much more difficult for kids to “fake read”- which apparently lots of them have been doing for a long time. By having to talk to a teacher about the book, they are being held accountable. For many of them, they are truly reading whole books for the first time. These students have been getting away with pretending to read, or reading just parts of books for a long time (apparently several of them have learned that if you read the very beginning and the very end of the book- you can convince the teacher that you’ve “read” the book). Another popular strategy is to “read” books that have a movie out. The conferencing is going well for the most part. There are still some kinks to work out, but it seems to be paying good dividends.

I found this thoughtful post about standardized testing by John Spencer. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that he teaches using an “authentic approach” and his scores are terrific. I also think he makes a good point in that the students behave different if the people with the “clipboards” are there. Of particular interest is the quote

“Our test results are a bit of an anomaly, because I told my students outright that the system is more rigged than Chuck-E-Cheese games and that no one wins in the process, but that huge transnational conglomerates want to feast on their minds like zombies.”

Jokes:

Ailments
A man was feeling terribly out of sorts and decided to go to the doctor so he made an appointment and showed up the next day. After the doctor examined the man, the doctor invited him into his office for the consultation. The doctor came into the room with three different bottles of pills. The doctor told the man to take the red pill in the morning with a big glass of water, the blue pill in the afternoon with a big glass of water and the green pill in the evening with a big glass of water. The man, terribly shocked at the amount of pills he had to take, asked the doctor what in the world was wrong with him. The doctor replied, “You aren’t getting enough water.”

News:

Charter school first in county to switch to four-day week

A Palm Beach County charter high school plans to switch to a four-day school week beginning in January. Students would be in school for a total of 902.4 hours this year, above the 900-hour minimum state requirement, according to a calculation received by the district, Edwards said.
It’s pitched as an opportunity for students to have more time for part-time jobs, school activities, and dual-enrollment programs that enable students to earn college credit. Daniel also described it as a way to decrease “discipline issues and student absences.”http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-four-day-school-week-20101021,0,6276565.story

Side note: look for Googletrekers
I’ve so got to check out TodaysMeet
Telling us a little about Skoodat
• Similar to Salesforce.com
• Large toolset to work with.
• Very scalable.
• www.skoodat.com

Roger Nevin
“School is becoming irrelevant.” – Student Quote
Bridging the gap
• Connecting education with how young people use digital technology in their personal lives. This web site has the following mandate when recommending technologies:
• it must improve learning
• it must engage students
• it must be based on best practices and research
• it is free and sustainable
• we have tested it successfully
… and one more

Using Google Apps Education Edition to Improve Learning.
Presentation content
• Challenges of traditional uses of computers in schools
• Paradigms of cloud computing and the 2009 Horizion report
• And many more ……
Teacher Comments
• Students worked in groups.
• Students were engaged.
• Students who liked music were into podcasting.
• Every student worked and collaborated on the group wiki.
• Students were engaged.
– Jackie Anderson, Teacher
Despite our success with using technology there were still challenges
• Audacity
• “Microsnot” Office
• Corel

What do you do if…
• Jason arrives to school with is World Issues ISU essay on a USB key. He tries to open it at school but it is unable to because of . . .
• Maria creates a presentation for her Law class on a Mac computer at home. Unfortunatelly she can’t open it at school. (NOTE: This is not necessarily accurate. Macs can save it so that it can be opened on a Windows machine. I included it because it was part of the presentation.)
• You have assigned a group presentation in your ENG 4UI class. In one group . . . .
• You are teaching a grade 12 history course and the final June essays are due. One of your students loses the assignment.
• You have asked your Grade 10 Science class to do their class presentations using Power Point. . . .
Cloud Computing
• You are already using cloud computing
• Data is held on internet servers.
• Programs which run the email service are on Internet servers.
Research & Best Practices
• The 2009 Horizon Report “introduces six emerging technologies or practices that are likely to enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations within horizons over the . . .
Cloud Computing
• Which means …
• You only need a browser to access both programs and data.
• Google has servers on ships.
• Accessed by any computer or PDA through an Internet Connection.
• Main apps
• email, chat, talk
• Images – Draw
• Calendar
• Word processer
• Spreadsheet – forms
• Can make online tests.
• Presentation Software
• Wiki/Web Page
• Video
UNDER ONE PLATFORM
• site: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=?
• Google Apps Education Edition is Free! and Ad Free!
• Why is it Free?
• This is their version of Charity Donations
• Secondary School in New York Video
• Teachers and Principals talk about Google Docs
• What do you get?
• 7 gigs of space for students to save podcast and video assignments
• Gives users a virtual drive that can be used to uplad and download any file up to 200MB to a total of 2GB
• Spam/Virus Checkers
• It is a paperless solution
• Saves printing costs.
• Documents are never lost – saves automatically
• Do not have to worry about the correc software version
• Can both upload and download documents off of your hard drive
• Quick setup
• Easy to administrate
• Ability to share assignments, documents
• Student to student
• Student to teacher to student
• Teacher to teacher to administration
• Communicate using documents to parents
• Prevents plagiarism
• Improves learning
• On-line tests and surveys
• Private or public
• Can record names
• Can automatically mark tests
• practice for EQAO Literacy Test
• Surveys (student, parent, staff)
• Example: Adam Scott: adamscott.ca
• Administrator power
• Can disable services
• Have precise control of who has access to what.
• Students keep their login and all account data for their entire school career and further.
• Challenges
• Need Internet Access
• However you can save documents off line as a word, ppt, rtf, open office document
• PDAs can access most features – but not all
• Your data is stored in another country (maybe)
• Patriot Act allows the US government to access your data
• However … there is not document cast where any government tapped into students or faculty google apps documents or emails.
Google Apps – Postini
• July 2009 Google added Postini security suite
• Audit emails
• Filtering
• High level virus and spam checker.
Selling Apps to Admin.
• Realize that many IT departments are not in favor of Google Apps
• Use applications such as bitstripsforschools which use the cloud.
• Start smaller with Google Apps Standard Edition
• Say, “This is a pilot project.”
• Use Google Standard Edition.
• Set up a formal meeting or presentation.
• Google Apps and the cloud is supported by leading research (Horizon Report)
• Is Secure
• Easier to administer
• Saves lots of $$$$$
• Easy for teachers to learn and allows them to be more productive
• Improves learning while teaching 21st Century Skills
• Promotes the school
• Is Green.
• Everything you make in google docs is searchable text.
Setting up Google Apps (easy)
• Get a domain (godaddy is good) – Cost is $10-15 per year
• Go to google
• Simple form to fill out (showing admin approval)
• Set MX records on the domain you registered and use forward feature from your domain to redirect your domain to the Google Apps Site
• Get a text file of students with first name, last name, login and password (could use pseudonyms)
Administration
• Less than one hour per week spent on it per 1000 students
Implementing Google Appls
• Use “buy in” approach (if you are not a schol administrator)
• Start with a few classes
• Must be successful from the beginning
• Teach both the students and the teacher – Helps to have (Yellow highlighting white words)
• Create an ? where the students have to create both a shared document and a web page where they images of the video.
Google Apps Activity One
Google Apps – Quote
“Everyone saw the benefits of share . . . .”
The Did You Know Video 4.0
Free Netbook program a success at Milton High School
• The price of netbooks is coming down.
• Lightweight
• Google is bringing out their own operating system.
• Kids prefer the net books
• Portability and connectivityconnectingeducaiton.com: Presentation site.
Presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dd4wqj5_406gwcsdnf4

Today was the last day of our standardized testing. Well, today was the last day of general testing. We still have some make ups to do for kids who were absent on testing days or kids who have just registered with us. The teachers are happy but exhausted. The kids are happy but really exhausted. Our students take much, much more time than the “suggested” times given to us. The kids work really hard. They want to do well. They take their time and focus. I wonder how much the legislators really understand about the testing that they have invested so much into. My favorite quote was that they are using “irrefutable data” to determine how good schools are. This in light of two of the tests have incorrect directions. One of the tests has an answer sheet that doesn’t match the test.

But, really, the kids are wiped out. They tested, and tested. They worked really hard. It’s difficult for middle school kids to be quiet for 3 hours at a time. But they did it. They allowed the students who work more slowly the opportunity to finish the test.

Next up is for us to spend hours packing up the tests and getting them shipped back. We’ll spend lots of time in this endeavor. Much more than I’m hoping legislators understand. For if they understand how much time and energy are spent on this and choose to ignore it…well.

We’ll wait months for the results. So much for informing instruction. The results will be pretty predictable. That is, results are most predictable by the social economic status of the students.

Soon (within a couple of years) we’ll have a national test. It’ll be interesting to see what that one is like. Will it be timed like the ACT? Will it be middle school developmental appropriate? (Please don’t misunderstand that- I don’t mean lower expectations).

Jokes:

Counting Skills
A teacher asked little Johnny if he knows the numbers 1 to 10. “Yes! Of course! My pop taught me even more than 10.” “Good. What comes after three? “Four,” answers the boy. “What comes after six?” “Seven.” “Very good,” says the teacher. “Your dad did a good job. Now, what comes after ten?” “Jack.”

On Our Mind:

NMSA 2010

Whither Wi-Fi?

Will TodaysMeet be used?

iTunes Rankings

Helping others:

Hello fellow middle school science teachers. This is a reminder to please complete this survey. My gratitude to the hundreds of teachers who have already done so. I am conducting a study of middle school science teachers and their teaching about the ocean. I need your help! Your answers to my survey questions will contribute to what we know about the current state of ocean literacy education in the United States. All other challenges to the world ocean aside, the intricacies of the current oil spill crisis are reason enough to ensure that our citizenry is ocean literate.
If you have at least one year of experience teaching middle school science, would you please take my survey? It will take 15-20 minutes to complete and your answers are completely confidential and anonymous. The survey can be accessed by clicking on the following Internet link:https://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_87zwywgq8dNRqn2

Advisory:

Voki – Voki is a free service that allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages.

Inspirational Quotes – Here, I’ll share 20 of my favorite inspirational quotes. I won’t include any commentary because the quotes speak for themselves. I hope they resonate with you as much as they have with me 🙂

University of Virginia’s Honor Code: Use this video in connection with the “Coat of Arms” materials from NMSA’s Treasure Book to build an Advisory activity!

Tech Tools:

Draw on any webpage. Share your ideas. Mark. Share. Done.
Draw on any webpage with MarkUp to quickly share your thoughts. Try it now by choosing a shape to trace. Get MarkUp to use it any time.http://markup.io/

Yudu
“Read online publications and self publish digital magazines, eBooks and more.” Here’s one thing that I like about it – you can create your own library of books. I started with a couple of books by Richard Byrne (Free Tech for Teachers)- Google for Teachers and Google for Teachers II.

10 Sites to create Comics from Tech Learning

“Creating Digital Comics has been one of my favorite thing to do with students when trying to integrate technology. While this can be done with any number of applications, such as Comic Life or Toon Boom, there are many online alternatives (mostly free) that offer a nice solution as well.”http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/33632

EdWeek focuses on Will Richardson

Presenter: Dr. Howard Rheingoldwww.vlog.rheingold.comwww.rheingold.comwww.twitter.com/hrheingold
How can you pluck the answer to any question out of the air?
How do you know that what you find is accurate?
They seem to be a set of literacies.
Attention as a literacy
Participation as a literacy
Collaboration
Critical consumption
The Literacies
Attention
Critical consumption
“Crap Detection” came from Ernest Hemmingway.
There’s a lot of crap on the web and it is up to us to be good consumers of information.
1996/1997 he began to think about this stuff.
His daughter began to look up things on the web.
Example: Martin Luther King, Jr. An Historical …
The site doesn’t have a good opinion of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do a whois on the site and it tells you who the owner is.
Stormfront owns it. (White Supremacy)
This is a cloaked website.
Example: Hitler Historical Museum
Showing these sites to students is the first step to understanding that what is out there isn’t always real.
There are all kinds of actors out there purchasing URLs.
BP bought a ton of search terms from Google.
Example: First Genetics: genetically mapping a better future.
It isn’t a legit site.
Example: Free Online Pregnancy Test
Example: Faisal Shahzad Facebook mixup highlights hazards of Web journalism.
Example: Help save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.
Article: SFGate: Howard Rheingoldhttp://critical-thinking.iste.wikispaces.net/
Looking for teaching stories there.
There are many spam and port sites that are now looking like legit sites and teachers and students need to be able to detect the difference.
Online is the greatest source of one’s disease as well as some totally bogus information.
The one thing that we can do is to improve the commons is to convince people that the things that are in error are in error.
Other Literacies
Attention:
Example: Student has the ability to look at other subjects and do well at the main course topic.
Multitasking isn’t effective.
Participation:
Collaboration
Media production is unlike other areas of production.
Look Penguin Revolution
Network Awareness
Networked Individualism
Professional Learning Networks
Trust Network
Find people you can learn from.
Long tail, small worlds, power law.
Presentation of self and a networked world.
There’s a great need for this in institutions today.
Call to Action!
The best we can do is work together and for each other.http://critical-thinking.iste.wikispaces.net/http://socialmediaclassroom.comwww.twitter.com/hrheingold
howard@rheingold.com
Additional Resource
Daniel Poynter Hand Out – Crap Detection (See below)
Please note: Clicking on the document should bring up a dialog box to switch between each page of the PDF.

The Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis, has posted an article about expecting teachers to use technology but not providing them any technology integration classes. She starts with the premise that we wouldn’t ask teachers to teach something that they have no background or expertise in, yet we really do that all of the time. She claims that no states require technology integration classes. I don’t personally know if that’s true.

I would agree that we sometimes think that the younger teachers have more technology expertise than the more veteran teachers. Yet that isn’t always the case. It is surprising, in some cases, as to what people know and don’t know.

The issue may be even bigger though. Do we really agree at what good “technology integration” looks like, feels like and is? Would every principal agree on “technology integration”?

Her point is well taken. However, I would take it even further. Too many teachers coming out of college don’t know the difference between summative and formative assessment. Too many teachers coming out of college have been trained for what was – not what is or what will be.

We’ve talked about handwriting before. Granted, it’s been a little while. However, I came across this article about handwriting. It brings up an agreement that I don’t think we discussed. Basically, the physical act of writing can have some effects on the brain.

Jokes:

Said the officer to the soldier, “Private, why did you salute that refrigerator?” The soldier replied, “Because it was General Electric.” “And that jeep?” the officer asked. Replied the soldier, “Because it was General Motors.”

Webspotlight:

BBC News: Faces of the U.S. Civil War

OK, this one is just silly- but with a good cause behind it. The idea plays off of the talking baby meme. You can type in up to 600 characters, pick a baby and listen/watch the fun. The cause supports no baby born with HIV by the year 2015. Check it out.http://www.one.org/international/actnow/babyprotest/widget.html

Website for this session: www.tinyurl.com/iste10crb and http://tinyurl.com/isteclassrom2-0
Note: It looks like the links are broken …
Format:
Ask a question, take two or three answers from the audience.
Show a site or something online that you like.
Posterous will upload anything for free.
Pearson will sponsor a NING, but it’s limited and you’re tied to the vendor.
Topos will transition stuff from NING to another site.
Site Show Off:
Scientists Space (NING)
Click on members
Kids took on the persona of a scientist and they worked on the project in groups of three.
They could use any number of Web 2.0 tools to show their understanding of the content.
Wordle
Graphics
Music
Kid who posted it is below grade reading level.
These were SPED kids who put together the Mendeleev page.
Question: For the scientist site: They’re using a gmail hack (cheat). Use a gmail account with a + but all the email account escheats+(scientist name)@gmail.com
Web demo: TypeWithMe (www.typewith.me)
Web demo: WallWisher
Post a question and get responses.
Is there a way to merge the stickies?
It’s designed to be strictly online.
Software: Microsoft Mouse Mischief
Instead of the wall wisher website.
Does work with wired mice.
Highest number mentioned so far has been six mice at a time.
Site Show Off: www.historyplace.com/speeches
Use with www.wordle.net
Tagxedo is a Wordle in a picture/art work form.
Note: Tagxedo is a pay site.
Just for fun: Copy and paste a school policy into Wordle …
Jen Wagner is posting a puzzle called “Guess the Wordle”jenuinetech.com/gtw
Put people’s tweets in there to see what their interests are.
General Question: How do you avoid teacher burnout?
Look at what you are teaching first and then look to apply the tool.
Quizlet.com
General Question: How do you define Web 2.0?
Ask Todd Williamson
Website: www.voki.com
Create characters that talk. Speaking avatar for everyone (free).
Site Show Off: National Lab Day
Scientists commit to help out for a day.
e.g. Civil war Sally
e.g. Madame Curious (Madam Curie) and sent her around the world to different scientists and had them use the “doll” like Flat Stanley.
Site Show Off: Adobe Connect Now
Polling system.
Twitucate: designed for classrooms.
Edmodo
Global Education Conference.com www.globaleducationconference.com